Ticks are transmitters of many viruses of importance in public health. However, viral diversity in ticks from South America is largely unknown [
24]. In recent years the emergence of new TBPV such as SFTSV and HRTV in Asia and North America, respectively, present a significant public health threat [
4]. In the present study, TBPV sequences detected in Colombian ticks collected form domestic animals were similar to
Lihan tick virus detected in China in
R. microplus ticks [
23]. Our results also agree with a work carried out in Southern of Brazil by Souza et al.
, in 2018, who analyzed six groups of
R. microplus ticks (~ 50 per group). They used a metagenomic approach with high-throughput sequencing (HTS) and detected
Lihan tick virus in 5 of 6 groups of ticks [
24]. Sameroff et al.
, 2019, conducted a study in Trinidad and Tobago in 2017 and 2018, in which they analyzed 638 ticks, including
R. microplus (
n = 320),
R. sanguineus (
n = 300) and
A. ovale (
n = 18) with HTS.
Lihan tick virus was detected in 14 of 16 pools of
R. microplus (MIR of 43.75; 14/320 ticks tested) results that differ from the MIR of 2.95 (4/1358) reported in our study. However, the methodology used for the detection of the
Lihan tick virus in these two studies was different, and Sameroff et al. used 20 ticks per pool, whereas we tested pool sizes of 10–15. Furthermore, the stage and sex distribution of ticks and season of collection in the two studies may have differed. These differences as well as geographic variation could explain the variability in the results [
25].
A limitation of the present study is the short fragment (less than 200 bp) of the L segment used for phylogenetic analysis. However, this segment is highly conserved and is the most used for phleboviruses phylogenetic studies [
21,
26,
27]. Subsequent studies will amplify a larger fragment of the L segment and include the detection of S and M segments, to rule out reassortment of genome segments with other Phenuivirus, in addition to the use of new technologies such as HTS, to better characterize the Colombian viruses. This is the first report of a virus sequence detected in ticks from Colombia and the first Colombian detection of
Lihan tick virus, a recently described virus with unknown pathogenicity. We suggest that detect of novel viral genomes in Colombia is important and that efforts to establish disease associations with these genomes is essential for One Health.